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The Study and Practice of Yoga, Volume I

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The Study and Practice of Yoga, Volume I THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF YOGA AN EXPOSITION OF THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI VOLUME I – SAMADHI PADA SWAMI KRISHNANANDA The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India Website: www.swami-krishnananda.org ABOUT THIS EDITION Though this eBook edition is designed primarily for digital readers and computers, it works well for print too. Page size dimensions are 5.5" x 8.5", or half a regular size sheet, and can be printed for personal, non-commercial use: two pages to one side of a sheet by adjusting your printer settings. 2 CONTENTS About this Edition ..................................................................................... 2 Publisher’s Note ............................................................................. 5 Chapter 1: The Aim of Yoga ................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: The Foundation of the Discipline in Yoga Practice ................................................................................. 17 Chapter 3: Broad Outline of the Stages of Yoga ......................... 28 Chapter 4: Individuality and Consciousness ............................... 39 Chapter 5: The Practice of Being Alone ......................................... 52 Chapter 6: Spiritual Life Is Postive, Not Punitive ...................... 64 Chapter 7: Initial Steps in Yoga Practice ....................................... 77 Chapter 8: The Principle of Self-Affirmation ............................... 89 Chapter 9: Perception and Reality ................................................ 100 Chapter 10: Self-Control: The Alpha and Omega of Yoga.... 112 Chapter 11: The Integrality of the Higher Self ......................... 125 Chapter 12: Sublimation – A Way To Reshuffle Thought.... 135 Chapter 13: Defence Mechanisms of the Mind ........................ 148 Chapter 14: The Indivisibility of All Things .............................. 160 Chapter 15: Consonance With the Essential Make-Up of Things ................................................................................. 172 Chapter 16: The Inseprability of Notions and the Mind ...... 184 Chapter 17: Objectivity Is Experience Finally ......................... 195 Chapter 18: The Dual Process of Withdrawal and Contemplation ................................................................ 207 Chapter 19: Returning To Pure Subjectivity ............................ 220 Chapter 20: The World and Our World ...................................... 231 Chapter 21: Returning To Our True Nature ............................. 244 Chapter 23: The Internal Relationship of All Things ............ 270 Chapter 24: Affiliation With Larger Wholes ............................. 286 Chapter 25: Sadhana – Intensifying A Lighted Flame ........... 298 Chapter 26: The Gunas of Prakriti ................................................ 309 Chapter 27: Problems Are A State of Mind ............................... 323 Chapter 28: Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication ....... 335 3 Chapter 29: The Play of the Gunas ............................................... 348 Chapter 30: The Cause of Bondage............................................... 361 Chapter 31: Intense Aspiration ...................................................... 373 Chapter 32: Our Concept of God .................................................... 387 Chapter 33: What Divine Love Is................................................... 399 Chapter 34: Surrender To God ....................................................... 414 Chapter 35: Yhe Recitation of Mantra ......................................... 426 Chapter 36: The Rise of Obstacles in Yoga Practice .............. 437 Chapter 37: Preventing the Fall in Yoga..................................... 450 Chapter 38: Impediments in Concentration and Meditation ....................................................................... 463 Chapter 39: Concentrating the Mind On One Reality ........... 476 Chapter 40: Re-Educating the Mind ............................................. 490 Chapter 41: Becoming Harmonious With All ........................... 504 Chapter 42: How Feelings and Sensation Work ..................... 517 Chapter 43: Harmonising Subject and Object .......................... 530 Chapter 44: Assimilating the Object ............................................ 544 Chapter 45: Piercing the Structure of the Object ................... 555 Chapter 46: The Barrier of Space and Time ............................. 567 Chapter 47: The Rise From Savitarka To Nirvitarka............. 579 Chapter 48: Encountering Troubles and Opposition ............ 593 Chapter 49: The Rise To Savichara and Nirvichara ............... 604 Chapter 50: The States of Sananda and Sasmita ..................... 616 Chapter 51: Sat-Chit-Ananda Or God-Consciousness ........... 628 4 PUBLISHER’S NOTE This is a compilation of the 110 lectures that Swami Krishnananda delivered from March to August in 1976 on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are a manual on mind control, meditation and mental discipline—a manual for spiritual freedom. Crisp and pithy in rendition, the sutras have an aphoristic quality and urge deeper reflection and dedicated application. Across various philosophies the denotation of yoga varies. Patanjali uses the term ‘yoga’ to denote a complete cessation of mental modifications so that consciousness rests within itself in the state of moksha or liberation. This teaching has been delivered through emphasis on practice rather than mere philosophy. This is verily a manual for us to operate the mind and thus our life. The Yoga Sutras are divided into four padas or chapters. The first chapter, the Samadhi Pada on which this volume is based, focuses on concentration of the mind and the practical aspects necessary for attaining meditative absorption. The second chapter, the Sadhana Pada, is about attaining and holding that single-pointedness through reining in the agitations of the mind by cultivating dispassion, discrimination and dedication. The third chapter, the Vibhuti Pada, focuses on the technique of samyama which is the combination of concentration, meditation and communion for the liberation of the spirit, while the fourth chapter, the Kaivalya Pada, is a metaphysical disquisition which deals with various subjects 5 as a sort of explanation of some of the themes dealt with in the earlier chapters. It is fitting to draw the reader’s attention to the clarity and simplicity with which Swamiji Maharaj comments on these sutras. Swami Krishnananda was the living embodiment of that awareness to which the sutras and all spiritual texts guide. It is commonly said that Sanskrit, the language of the Gods, is by far the only one that has transcended, to some extent, the limitations of vivid expression and bears in it the ability to express the nuances of spiritual processes and the resultant experiences that the great Sages and Masters have experienced and conveyed to us. That Swamiji Maharaj is able to bend the limited English language to yield to his knowledge is a completely humbling experience. These Yoga Sutras of Patanjali spoken by Swami Krishnananda are being made available to the public for the first time. It is our desire to retain the original lectures in their spoken form to a large extent. The are some unique twists of phrases and application of words that are uniquely Swamiji in origin and it has been sought to allow those to be as they were intended, without undermining the reverence to the English language. Consequently the lectures have been edited in very few places to render them the way Swamiji Maharaj himself spoke them. 6 Chapter 1 THE AIM OF YOGA The whole of our life is a successive series of efforts – whether it is the effort that I put forth, or that which someone else puts forth. All these efforts have a common background, although the efforts of human beings are variegated and there is also an apparent diversity of the aims behind the efforts. The farmer’s effort is towards producing harvest in the field; the industrialist’s effort is towards production of goods and such other items in his field; the effort of the schoolmaster or the professor is in another direction; and so on and so forth. We have an apparent diversity of aims, motivated by a diversity of efforts. But this is a great illusion that is before us, and we live in a world of illusions which we mistake for realities. The illusion arises on account of our inability to see beyond a certain limit of the horizon of our mental perceptions. The farmer forgets that the production of the harvest in the field is not the only aim, or rather the ultimate aim, of his efforts. It has another aim altogether connected with certain others, and so on and so forth, in an endless chain which cannot easily come within the comprehension of an untutored mind. The stomach does not eat for its satisfaction. We know very well why the stomach eats. The stomach may say “I eat”, but it does not eat; the eater is somebody else, though it is thrust into the stomach. The legs do not walk for their own sake. What do the legs gain by walking? They are walking for some other purpose – somebody else’s 7 purpose, not their own. Nor do the eyes gain anything by seeing; the eyes see for somebody else. Likewise, there is an inherent and underlying basic aim which is transcendent to the immediate purpose visible in front of any particular individual who puts forth effort, just as the legs do not walk for their own sake, the eyes do not see for their own sake, the stomach does not
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